Common Animal Species of India

Jagran Josh

27-AUG-2015 17:52

The wildlife in India consists of a mix of species of different types of organisms. Apart from a handful of the major farm animals such as cows, buffaloes, goats, poultry, and camels, India has a surprising wide variety of animals native to the country. It is home to Bengal Tigers, Indian Lions, Deer, Pythons, Wolves, Foxes, Bears, Crocodiles, Wild Dogs, Monkeys, Snakes, Antelope species, varieties of bison and the Asian elephant.

Common Animal Species are explained below:

Mammals:

The common deer species found in India include the Sambar, Chital, Barasingha and Barking deer.

Sambar lives in small family parties especially inhilly forested areas and feed mainly on shrubsand leaves of low branches. They are dark brownin colour and have large thick antlers, each having3 branches.

Chital or spotted deer live inlarge herds in forest clearings where they grazeon the grass. They have a rust brown body withwhite spots which camouflages them in the forest.Each antler has three branches called tines.

The rare Hangul deer is found only in Kashmir.It has a magnificent spread of antlers with 6branches on each antler.

The Barasingha, or swamp deer, has wide hoofs that enable thisbeautiful animal to live in boggy areas of theTerai. Each antler has 6 or more branches.

Thetiny barking deer lives in many forest areas allover India. It has two ridges on its face and ashort antler with only 2 branches. Its call soundslike the bark of a dog.

The Blackbuck is the only true antelope found in India. It lives in large herds. The males areblack on top and cream below and have beautifulspiral horns that form a ‘V’ shape.

The Chinkara, also known as the Indian gazelle, isa smaller animal and is pale brown in colour ithas beautiful curved horns.

The rare Chausingha, or four horned antelope, is theonly animal in the world that has four horns.

The Nilgai is the largest of the dryland herbivores. The males are blue-gray. Nilgai have whitemarkings on the legs and head. They have shortstrong spike-like horns.

Indian wild ass, endemic to the Little Rann of Kutch.

A single species, the Nilgiri tahr is foundin the Nilgiri and Annamalai hills in south India.

The Rhinocerous is now restricted to Assam butwas once found throughout the Gangetic plains.

The wild buffalo is now also restricted to theTerai. The elephant is distributed in the Northeasternand Southern States. It is threatened byhabitat loss and poaching for ivory.

Gaur isfound in patches in several well-wooded partsof India.

The Leopard is more adaptable than the tigerand lives both in thick forests and degraded forestareas. Its beautiful ring like markings camouflagesit so perfectly that its prey cannot seeits stealthy approach.

The smaller jungle cat is a light brown animal and the leopard cat, which is a little bigger than a domestic cat,are very rare.

The most typical predator of theHimalayas is the snow leopard, which is veryrare and poached for its beautiful skin which is pale grey with dark grey ring-like markings.

The wolf, jackal, fox and the wild dog or‘dhole’ form a group called canids.

Anotherthreatened predator is the Himalayan wolf.The wolves are now highly threatened as theyhave become increasingly dependent onshepherd’s flocks.

One of the common monkey species of the forestis the bonnet macaque, which has a redface, a very long tail and a whorl of hair on thescalp which looks like a cap.

Our other commonmonkey is the Rhesus macaque, which issmaller and has a shorter tail than the bonnet.

A rare macaque is the Lion-tailed macaque found only in a few forests of the southernWestern Ghats and Annamalai ranges. It is blackin colour, has long hair, a grey mane and a tasselat the end of its tail that looks like a lion’stail.

The common langur has a black face andis known as the Hanuman monkey.

The rare Golden langur is golden yellow in colour andlives along the banks of the Manas River inAssam.

The Capped langur is an uncommonspecies of Northeast India.

The rare black Nilgiri langur lives in the southern Western Ghats,Nilgiris and Annamalais.